18 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

6 Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

13 And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

14 And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

15 The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,

16 And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!

17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,

18 And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!

3
posted on 02/02/2013 11:04:00 AM PST
by bmwcyle
(People who do not study history are destine to believe really ignorant statements.)

This may be a simple instance of political corruption. The mayor will look at each company’s contributions to his political opposition (the NRA) and determine whether the company will get a city purchase order. It is an attack on the NRA performed by threatening the NRA’s supporters.

Hey, if you eat at Bob’s restaurant, I might not be buying my next car from you. Maybe you should reconsider where you eat...whadya think?

Unvarnished, old-fashioned corruption.

6
posted on 02/02/2013 11:25:01 AM PST
by iacovatx
(Conservatism is the political center--it is not "right" of center)

Joe W. has been banging this drum for years - and has been wrong for years. The day we have real positive interest rates is the day the US goes broke or devalues the currency. Interest rates cannot be allowed to rise since the debt is unpayable. As long as we have negative real rates, gold will be strong.

With honest GAAP accounting, the USA's annual deficit is $6 or $7 TRILLION taking into account current accruals! And that is against an overstated GDP of $15 or $16 Trillion which includes massive govt spending financed mostly through money printing.

The conditions that have steadily debased the dollar vs. gold over the past 12 years are not better than they have been; they are worsening and aggregate, excess debt is increasing. The world's debt to hard collateral ratio is astounding and is worsening. I'll keep holding my bullion, thank you.

I believe what's happening is entities like Goldman Sachs are putting forth heavy propaganda to drive GOLD prices down and investers away from GOLD. They then BUY up the gold ownership to ride out the period when the SHTF.

Since inflation is really running at 8-10%, it's pretty unlikely that interest rates will exceed inflation, as they would be doing if the government wasn't manipulating the rates and the currency.

We're not much better off than Japan. We get any genuine rate increases and the government is up the creek, big time. We are already borrowing money to pay the interest on the existing debt. Well, not exactly. No one is really even loaning us money, the fed is printing and "buying" most of the debt. It's like sticking a hose up your arse and expecting to live by breathing your own farts. Suicidal.

“It’s like sticking a hose up your arse and expecting to live by breathing your own farts. Suicidal.”

Well put. Perpetual motion designs always seems to fail!

Kyle Bass is predicting Japan’s collapse within 18 to 24 months. That has been a losing bet for a long time but I would never bet against Kyle.

John Williams of Shadowstats (http://www.shadowstats.com/) is predicting US hyperinflation in the relatively near future. Of course, precise timing is completely impossible to guess (and big events always take longer than anyone imagines) but high inflation is in our future. http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-414-hyperinflation-special-report-2012.pdf You can already see it happening in the stock market - rising stock prices in an environment of poor earnings. The MSM sees this as an indication of good times ahead - instead of an early warning of impending price inflation. As Kyle Bass recently said: “Zimbabwe’s stock market was the best performer this decade - but your entire portfolio now buys you 3 eggs.”

Even for Joe Weisenthal, this is pretty weak cheese. Well, let’s just get to ‘em, one by one:

1) Current rates are purely the result of the Fed buying every debt instrument in sight with printed money, nonstop.

2) Gold is above its long term average, so what? A bag of chips has surged to new all time highs and is currently above its long term average too; should I expect it to be cut back to its 1968 price?

3) Official CPI has been fraudulent for forty years, and increasing in the level of fraud with every adjustment. Draw that again with real inflation numbers and we can talk. (Does anybody know what the numbers on the Y-axis here mean?)

4) Gold is overvalued because the biggest housing bubble in the history of the world busted?

5) Any talk of “the Eurozone” being “saved” in the near or far future is simply foolishness. They have only one solution for their debt problems: pay off that debt with more debt-backed debt.

6) Now all of a sudden, something out of trend is supposed to continue to go out of trend, instead of reverting to “historical average”. That same graph shows that two years ago, the price moved 3 standard deviations in less than a year, twice.

7) Cherry-picking graph points. The full graph from 2010 on says nothing more than that we’re bouncing around at zero. (NB that each bounce is weaker than the one before.)

8) Again, from 2010 on, it’s just a graph of random movement.

9) Noise.

10) Housing prices are going up again? Again, so what? BTW, shouldn’t this be indexed to CPI, excuse me, to real CPI?

11) It doesn’t follow that an increase in households implies an increase in housing. I need to see this broken down as home ownership vs rentals.

12) More cherry-picking. The decades-old adage of a silver quarter buying a gallon of gas and an ounce of gold buying you one hell of a suit still holds.

21
posted on 02/02/2013 1:12:38 PM PST
by jiggyboy
(Ten percent of poll respondents are either lying or insane)

Over time, there is a 90% correlation between Federal reserve credit expansion (buying feral debt/printing money). The Fed Head has committed to open-ended credit expansion until the unemployment rate become acceptable. To assert that the dollar price of gold will fall in a period where the Federal Reserve is funding about half of federal spending by printing money and notating it with a journal entry defies logic.

Moreover, when about 25% of grocery spending is funded by social programs and when 50% of citizens receive some kind of government payment and the federal government is borrowing more than 50% of the money it spends, how much of the sales and profit of consumer goods companies like P & G is funded by money-printing?

What percent of the SP500 index is made up of companies whose customers are people who receive government benefits, or direct business from government? What percent of the SP500 index is funded by air-backed FedBucks? And so what fraction of the DJI is inflated by air backed FedBucks and when the Fed gets exhausted, how much will the SP500 and the DJI drop?

"Joe W. has been banging this drum for years - and has been wrong for years. The day we have real positive interest rates is the day the US goes broke or devalues the currency. Interest rates cannot be allowed to rise since the debt is unpayable. As long as we have negative real rates, gold will be strong."

I agree with everything you've said.

I've read that if interest rates go up by two percent, TS(will)HTF.

If we begin to have any sort of recovery, interest rates will go up. So...some self-limiting things going on.

Call me cynical in my advancing years, but wouldn’t a concerted effort to drive down the price of gold make it easier for Obama and the Fed to accrue and pay for the 300 Tons of it that they owe Germany?

" Call me cynical in my advancing years, but wouldnt a concerted effort to drive down the price of gold make it easier for Obama and the Fed to accrue and pay for the 300 Tons of it that they owe Germany? "

"The second is that the era of crisis is over, and so the impulse to hedge against collapse (or massive volatility) is diminishing."

IMO, Weisenthal's journalism looks more like propaganda sponsored by government-connected consumers of debt, as time goes on. The most important rates won't go up enough for at least another year, more likely at least about two years, give or take. I don't know much about gold, but I would expect it to fluctuate at least until then.

31
posted on 02/02/2013 3:13:52 PM PST
by familyop
(We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of rotten politics smelled around the planet.)

Sometime in the near future, global agricultural interests will be unable to keep meat prices down by taking revenues from other businesses/debt, IMO. It will be difficult to tell, though, as to when to buy livestock. I’m holding off on getting yaks for at least another year (high altitude and cold here for year-round cattle that consume more hay). Hay’s very difficult to find and afford in the West.

32
posted on 02/02/2013 3:35:10 PM PST
by familyop
(We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of rotten politics smelled around the planet.)

Oh, so our national debt is under control then? No? Didn’t think so. Gold prices have plenty of room to grow just as fast as that debt has been. The Market Makers send out these pinheads to spread propaganda and then buy or sell depending on what they need. Happens all the time, and anyone that is serious in the financial world only listens to them to know which way they are trying to manipulate the markets.

33
posted on 02/02/2013 3:52:26 PM PST
by CodeToad
(Liberals are bloodsucking ticks. We need to light the matchstick to burn them off.)

Here's a little tidbit of info that I learned from my archaeology studies. Cows use their food three times more efficent than do horses. Archaeologists use the ratio of cow/horse bones in an area to determine if deaths were drought related. More horse will die and sooner than cows.

The world is very different today in the world of exchange. the value of items for a short period will not be like the old systems until things adjust. These periods of change have been in the past. Money and gold will not worth crap.

39
posted on 02/02/2013 4:54:37 PM PST
by bmwcyle
(People who do not study history are destine to believe really ignorant statements.)

The day we have real positive interest rates is the day the US goes broke or devalues the currency. Interest rates cannot be allowed to rise since the debt is unpayable. As long as we have negative real rates, gold will be strong.

Yours is the most concise summary of the current economic situation I have heard. BTTT.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.